How many times have people posted here about how software is no longer optimized because CPUs keep evolving, making programmers lazy? It seems things have changed. The question is: will LLMs manage to squeeze the most out of this hardware, better than compilers do? In the few tests I’ve run, yes, a lot.

Most of the gain seems to come from choosing a much smaller program. Frame implements enough X11 for this one desktop and leaves out decades of compatibility work that a compiler would still have to preserve.